Received in the Post: The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes

I am a bit of a fan of Lauren Beukes writing (ok I am a lot of a fan). I read and enjoyed Moxyland when it came out but she really captured my attention with the Arthur C. Clarke award-winning Zoo City, it also won the Kitchies Red Tentacle Award and the 2010 BSFA Award for best artwork.

So in December last year when I was on Twitter (as I so often am) I saw on the Harper Collins fiction publicity team twitter feed that Lauren would be touring the UK in April/May I cheekily asked if she would be available for school visits. Now instead of saying go away you ‘orrible oik! as you would imagine someone would say when asked such an impertinent question they were very nice about it and pointed out that Lauren would only be in the UK for a short time and already had an extremely full touring schedule.

Anyway flash forward to a month ago when this arrived in my letter box:

Cue all sorts of hyperventilating and excited running around. Then I was hit with a conundrum, I had an advance reader copy of a book I had been anticipating since December did I dare read it and when the finished copy was released act like a hipster “oh I read that before it was released!”. It occurred to me that I was one: being stupid, and two: I do not even remotely resemble a hipster and three: it is a book, I am a reader and really, really wanted to read it.

As I started reading The Shining Girls I received another interesting artefact in the post:

It was a view-master, I had one when I was a child, I think my parents still have it in the family toy box but I will have to check when next I am back in Cape Town.

It had a stereoscopic reel inserted so I held it up to to the light and had a look.

The Shining Girls is being launched today in South Africa and in the UK on the 25th April. I will post my review on The Shining Girls this afternoon.